


The Story Teller - A Study in Sherlock

by nothing_happens_to_me



Series: The Story Teller [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-10 02:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4373570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nothing_happens_to_me/pseuds/nothing_happens_to_me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hi!<br/>prodigalmind and me decided to to continue in our efforts t translate "Der Geschichtenerzähler". Bur you are invited to support us! Or even just tell me, if you find something strange in our text...!</p></blockquote>





	1. That’s what People DOOO! (Autumn 2002)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> prodigalmind and me decided to to continue in our efforts t translate "Der Geschichtenerzähler". Bur you are invited to support us! Or even just tell me, if you find something strange in our text...!

 

 

In autumn, 2002, Jim didn’t only lose sight of the object of his immense longing – he also lost his parents. Professor James Hawkins and his wife died in a car accident. Jim felt a strange mixture of emptiness and at the same time boundless freedom. This new situation made it much more uncomplicated for Richard Brook and also easier for his secret activities!

No weekly phone calls anymore: „Will you finally visit us again on this weekend, Jimmy-Boy?“

No monthly inquiry of his Mum: „Now, darling? Haven’t you found a nice girl, yet, among all the doctorands? You have to work less! You have to go out more often. There is more to the world than just bits and bytes!"

„When I'm ready, I'll find one on the Internet“, he had always been able to stall her. Once, his Dad had even tried to set him up with the niece of a colleague! Just to not annoy his Dad, Jim had had to meet this dull, ugly wench two more times to state his good will!

What a hassle!

But now all this lay behind him.

Well, almost.

First of all he had to fulfil the tiresome duty of organizing their funeral. During the ridiculous ceremony he would have to meet all of his boring relatives.

“Well, anyway!”, he said to himself, “I’ll take that as an opportunity to study what people look like when they're mourning and what sincere and dishonest voices sound like. I’ll take it as a drama lesson.”

There was only one person, he was pleased to see again, but he probably would have no opportunity to interact with her. Not only because they would have little time alone, but also because he was unsure of how she coped with these deaths. Above all, he could not act out of character – and if she still was like she used to be and how he hoped that she would still be, she wouldn’t either.

And this one special person was Jim’s half-sister Janine. She was an extramarital daughter of his father, but when her mother, a refugee from Pakistan, had died in 1991, Jim's parents had decided to give her a new home and had adopted the orphan. Jim being 15 years old at that time had been horrified at first by the idea that a nine-year-old sister would step into his life. However, the little girl had loved him from the first moment on, and soon she had begun to almost idolise him. Indeed, Jim also learnt a lot from her. He owed her that by now, in spite of his fundamental disinterest in the other gender, he had the ability to understand women, to manipulate and to use them optimally. Though Janine was no genius, she had charm and was a convincing actress and experienced liar. But above all she had no qualms and that quality Jim appreciated most.

So the half-siblings only exchanged furtive glances, almost like secret lovers and Jim could read in her brown eyes that she probably also felt little more than faint regret and that her tears were not real.

The funeral service, this incredible Catholic fuzz about dead people, dead words and dead flowers, was held by Jim's uncle, the priest. He insisted to do the job himself, but it had been a very stupid idea, because he could hardly avoid sobbing all the time (as if he couldn't trust in his own faith) and the shaking of his voice made his pathetic phrases about resurrection and everlasting life totally ridiculous.

Jim could hardly keep himself from rolling his eyes. Ordinary people could be so incredibly annoying, but to have such an idiotic saint in the family, was unspeakably embarrassing!

However, even the most bombastic ceremony owns the mercy to pass eventually.

Courteously Jim stood at the double grave of his parents and thought: “You have fulfilled your task quite well. But, by now, you have become a hindrance. It is exceedingly convenient that you're gone, before you could start putting really tiresome claims on me. Nevertheless, it must be splendid for you that you had not to suffer of old age and illness – yes, not even feel the fear of growing weak and sick at all.”

Yes, Jim was absolutely satisfied with this situation.

It had been time.

Quite simple.

He listened to himself, to his mighty mind and given this celebration bereft of meaning, the wailing people and all these gravestones and angel's statues, he came to the conclusion: “Not me! Dying is for ordinary people. That's what they do after all.

Now, otherwise the earth would have been overcrowded long ago!

But not me! This particularly superior spirit will last!

Head bent and with heavy steps – but a feathery heart and with ambitious plans – Professor James Hawkins junior left the cemetery of his hometown, with no intentions of ever coming back.

 

 


	2. The Name of the Sorcerer King (in 2002-2005)

 

During the following years the brilliant informatics professor James Hawkins increasingly disappeared from the academic stage. Allegedly because of his bad health. Or did the sudden death of his parents give him a hard time? Perhaps because it had shown him his own mortality? Or had he simply earned or inherited too so much money that he indulged to idleness in all seclusion? The interest of the public or even his students in that case was not particularly big. Jim had always been careful not to strike too much attention.

What nobody even suspected: He split into two personalities.

A bit like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but he was totally controlling it.

For quite a while he had addressed himself simply as “Anonymous” when it came to marking his terrain in the underworld and of signing his works and he was known for his wild torture threats, however, now he mused on something … More creative … More poetic! …, nevertheless, it should also appear normal and unsuspicious.

After an especially big and particularly successful coup which nobody would be able to trace back to him, after he had extremely elegantly ridded himself of some accomplices, his subconsciousness proudly presented to him what it had relentlessly worked on for so long: Jims new name!

Moriarty!

“Oh, yes…!”, he rejoiced inwardly, “Brilliant idea! So profound and complex!”

One can see it as a sort of loan word from the Latin, mori artis, the death of art (because I exercise a dying profession: the thinking). Or one reads it as a death by art (because my art is deadly and mighty like death…)

But, actually, it is the English version of an old Irish name and means helmsman, navigator – and this is what I am! I alone know the course, the real destination port to all our big journeys and predatory attacks: 

 

Sherlock Holmes!


	3. Angel with Errors (2005)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately prodigalmind won't have the time anymore to help me with this translation, so I fear this will be the last chapter. Sorry - but as you are going to understand by reading this following efford I made here - I don't consider myself to be able to do this alone.
> 
> But perhaps one of you wants to try? Maybe someone who is a native speaker who has learned some German...?

 

* * *

 

 

 **Angel with Errors** (2005)

 

 

 

It took over two years to Jim to find a new trace of his beloved prince – and it led into London's drug swamp!  
That was music to Jim's ears! Sherlock Holmes were accostumed to things that were illegal! And if it was still necessary he would probably be broken enough, to receive some final fine-tuning from his master!  
  
But while Jim was still thinking to bring(?) Sherlock to a new designer drug and dreamed to bind him with some kind of love potion, as soon as such a thing would have been invented, he also had to realize again that he had crowed too soon again, because again he came too late! Sherlock Holmes was trying to get away from the drug again, had his chemistry studies resumed – and what was far worse: He started to help Scotland Yard solving crimes! He fought on the side of the angels...!

How devastating! (shattering? disappointing?)  
Nevertheless, there were still rays of hope: There was Sherlock's loneliness, his arrogance and his obvious lack of interest in women!  
  
So Jim didn't give in, but plunged into what he used to call secretly his "work": He built his web and wove it ever closer around the beloved.  
  
  
One glorious day he discovered that Sherlock Holmes had a website!  
  
1\. I observe everything, it ran and:  
2\. From what I observe, I deduce everything.  
  
Jim let out a guffaw.  
  
This downright blasphemous smugness pleased him beyond measure.  
  
Well well! Our amazing Sherlock sees everything! he chuckled.  
My uncle has always maintained, which would apply to God ...  
Do you also hear everything? And what is even more important: Do you also understand everything?

We will see!  
  
All very clever, what could be read there - only that he was still standing on the wrong side! But the dullness of the angels and his own pride would soon going to ruin Sherlock's miserable carreer/way of life(?); he, James Moriarty himself would control his prince's fate!  
 

Well well, Sherlock, you thus bring light into the dark, huh?

 

Do you know the legend of the proudest and most beautiful one of God's angels?  
They called him also bringer of light.  
  
Lucifer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

****************************

 

though...

 

to be continued...

not by me alone - thanks to prodigalmind who translated half of the text so far and corrected my part! -

so if anyone wants to take over please contact me...!

 


	4. Hope (Autumn 2009)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Story Teller has a new translator!  
> Thanks to ilw1981 who offered not only to help, but to do it herself. She hasn't published anything about herself yet, so I will not reveal anything either by introducing her or something.  
> HF!

 

 

  
One day, a man came into contact with him who wanted to offer his services as an assassin. He bore the name Hope, and Jim took that as a good omen. He listened attentively to the peculiar plan of the taxi driver: this man offered to exterminate Jim's enemies if they made the mistake of getting into his taxi. This mistake should be helped along here and there.  
  
Jim thought about it carefully and then let Jefferson Hope know that he had a special job for him, for which he would be princely rewarded, but he would have to be prepared to kill hapless victims. And, on top of that, that he had to talk to them - so that they weren't strangers any more. Specifically, he should drive them to suicide. Did he have enough cold-bloodedness in him to do this?  
  
After a short period of pondering about it, Jim contacted him. Hope allowed the details to be elucidated, and clever as he was, he understood immediately that all pills were fatal: the trick was to shove them to the side of his mouth or under his tongue and then to spit them out as quickly as possible.  
  
Jim warned his protegé of Sherlock Holmes. "This laddie", said he, and tried not to fall into a dithyrambic tone, "belongs to a rare species of genius, " he is perfectly capable of proper thinking." And then, as if in a flash of insight, he added "Exactly like you, Hope! Look at his website! I shall send you the link. The police will have absolutely no inkling of what you are driving at with all these random victims. But he, he loves such mind games and he would be in a position to come after you. So take care...!"  
  
Then, Jim ended the telephone conversation. He only wanted to lay back and enjoy the game.

 

  
To be continued.


	5. The Palace of the Frood Prince

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously ilw1981 and I can't agree about every detail. And I admit I'm stubborn sometimes...  
> ...and sooooooo changeable!
> 
> (*eyeroll* "...artists...!")
> 
> So if you find mistakes, sure I have made them subsequently.

 

 

Of course, Jim tried to investigate Sherlock's past, contacts and everything he could find out..  
But the name Holmes is not so very rare, and no one who had a Facebook account or something similar, seemed to have any connection with him. Peculiar! Was he really the only one in the world?  
  
Not for very long, any more, my sweet prince...!  
  
Jim threw another look at Sherlock's homepage once and was happy to see that the latter had set up a forum, also.  
This was more than a simple invitation to come into contact. Possibly much, much more than that, a secret, silent cry born out of unbeknownst loneliness.  
  
And up to now, it was completely empty.  
  
Of course, Sherlock got e-mails: business questions like: I am looking for someone to shadow my wife because I think she is betraying me...  
Or  
Please, find my husband, I cannot believe that he left me - could you, please, give me an estimate?  
  
But a forum is something entirely different: it challenges strangers to enter into a friendly dispute with the host, to show him understanding or generally to take up a position concerning his magisterial knowledge. A forum is almost a sort of passive propositioning of the unknown.

That's what you would expect: That a prince charming lives in a palace, a pompous, cheerful place to invite old and new friends to balls and other festivals.

But not so this one.

There is a saying that paper is patient, but websites are even more. It doesn't matter if you choose a muddy grey or a royal blue. All the colours are for free. Every one could create his site at his own taste.  
Sherlock's site was, at first glance, bleak and forbidding as a fortress on a high, always snow-covered cliff.  
But now, the prince had lowered the drawbridge.  
  
Jim had obviously a lot of other things to do, but he observed Sherlock's site religiously. It was for him the first mouse click in the morning and the last one in the evening.  
  
The forum remained empty!  
Virginally untouched in some way...  
  
This situation filled Jim with pride and happiness, strange was, however, this sensation of sympathy, which was mixed in these wonderful sentiments. But Jim could analyse even this mood. He himself had known loneliness from a young age. He had been lonely when he had let his environment share his thoughts, and deep down he had remained lonely forever: Professor James Hawkins had had rivals and enviers, on top of that middling students and colleagues, who had not trusted themselves around him. Moriarty had business partners and accomplices who feared him - and they were fully justified to do so! Only Rich Brook had, except competitors, fans and people from the same type of work who esteemed his pleasant demeanor on set or the rehearsal stage, also something like friends. But the ware Richard's friends. Not Jim's.  
  
On the contrary, Sherlock prided himself on his site on his genius, indirectly described himself as inerrant, and it was also disturbing that he had formulated his offer to solve any problem almost as a threat and had not attempted to cover his offer as a form of providing help.  
(He should have asked the advice of a professional in public relation..)  
  
No wonder, then, that no one dared enter this forum! Oh, how much did Jim want to be the first!  
It would have been easy. So easy!  
But with that, he would have broken the ice, and he didn't want that.  
  
Freeze peacefully for a while longer, my sweet prince! he thought.

 

 

tbc


	6. The Game is on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again: If you find faults, they are mine...
> 
> nhtm

 

  
In the meantime, Jefferson Hope committed his first murder. And he hadn't caught just anybody, it had been a real sir: Jeffrey Patterson.  
Jim read the newspaper articles on this shocking "suicide" with great interest. He was tempted to archive-file them, exactly like back then over the mysterious death of Carl Powers. Not because this series of killing won't become such a great milestone in his career, but because this was the conundrum with which he, the mighty Wizard would get in contact with the smart Prince!  
When Jim had first seen Jefferson Hope on the screen of his computer, it had immediately struck him that there was something terribly wrong.  
Both with the man himself and his proposition.  
Obviously, it did not cost Jim any effort to investigate Hope's background and environment. Because there were so few points of reference he found Hope's secret in his medical record; the cabbie had to expect his own demise daily. No wonder that he had kept that a secret! With this level of risk-taking was he absolutely unbearable for passenger transportation!  
  
On the one hand, Jim found this disappointing. Every frustrated idiot ( given that they didn't believe in the Last Judgement or Karma or any other higher court of justice) could play the villain when he knows that he won't have to bear the consequences for very long.  
Possibly even more disappointing was Hope's altruistic motive, his children a greater fund to leave.  
On the other hand, this mixture of despair, cold-bloodedness and sentimentality produced a refreshing human secret, whose unravelling would produce great personal satisfaction to the self-titled consulting detective.  
  
Naturally, Jim knew that Sherlock lived on Montague Street, close to the British Museum.  
He hacked with abandon into the security camera opposite Sherlock's apartment and observed who came and went.  
There were people who came only once: clients who were turned down by Sherlock, or whose problems he solved immediately; people who came twice: at the beginning and the end of their cases; people Sherlock accompanied, or those who brought it about that he came out of the house after he had sent them on their way: those were cases which really interested him.  
In the two last groups of the visitors was one who came very often: a Scotland Yard inspector.  
  
Interesting!  
  
I need someone in his closest quarters, thought Jim.  
  
Of course, Sherlock left the house from time to time without an obvious reason or clearly visible haste.  
Not to buy drugs, certainly...  
No, in this instance he seemed to be actually clean.  
  
From time to time, he would visit the pathology department at St Bartholomew's hospital: the old building on the side of Giltspur Street. Surely for reasons of research and possibly on the track of undiscovered murders.  
  
On top of all that, came a mysterious gentleman in a three-piece suit with an umbrella who paid an occasional visit to Sherlock. He didn't come by taxi or in his own car, no, this snob preferred to come in a black chauffeured limousine to the apartment.  
  
Once, when this gentleman bestowed his presence on Sherlock, he carried a small packet under his arm when he entered the house. He didn't have it with him when he emerged in twenty short minutes and prepared to enter the limousine; then Sherlock opened a window, threw the snob the said packet on his head and growled loudly: "Piss off, Mycroft!"  
  
Jim laughed in surprise and clapped his hands with glee.  
"Oh, now everything is clear!" he crowed.  
  
Obviously, he couldn't make out what that packet could have held ( at any rate, it was too soft or too light to have left the attacked one with any wounds), but he had reaped a much more interesting piece of information: the fine - almost five to ten years' older man - could not be anyone else except Sherlock's elder brother!  
  
It went without question that Jim would take him particularly under his lens...!

 

 

tbc


	7. Chess Trap* (still 2009)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear readers of TST-series!
> 
> Just to send you a little farewell-present I tried to translate one last chapter. I’m sorry, but I’m not able to do this alone, my English is to poor.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

 

  
  
From time to time it happened that Sherlock tore open his windows and thick smoke poured into the open air. Once - and this time it was particularly bad - Jim himself called the firefighters, when he saw it on the Internet. Of course he did it so tricky that no one could trace the call! At the same time he went by a taxi to Montague Street, watching during his ride incessantly on his laptop on the chopped camera how Sherlock leaned coughing and choking from one of the windows. He had to hold the frame and gasping for breath.  
  
Everything was great: the fire brigade and ambulance arrived, then the brother in his jag - and certainly Sherlock was going to face a heap of trouble! Jim caught a glimpse of the bickering of the two adversaries: Sherlock sitting in the open rear door of the ambulance, which much to the chagrin of a paramedic declined again and again the oxygen mask because he had to deliver sarcastic comments and Mycroft which paced up and down nervously in front of him and seemed torn in halves behind his condescending facade of relief and rage.  
As the elder Holmes departed and the chaos abated, Jim instructed the cabbie to follow the jaguar. He was now close enough to hack into Mycroft’s phone to determine the number and implant him a spyware, while he was using his mobile and besides, he learned that Mr Holmes had gone to the Diogenes Club!  
  
Mycroft Holmes was a promising object! Not only because he was Sherlock's brother, no, he seemed to be really, really important: of national importance – or even more ...!  
  
Fun increases every day on observing Sherlock! Jim thought. He hacked into Mr Holmes' emails and rummaged through them fascinated.  
Then he wrote an untraceable message:  
  
"Saw you had a bad day! Your little brother likes to play with fire! Literally! It’s certainly not an easy job to watch over him!"

  
A moment later he put out this e-mail account after just one use again.  
After that he commissioned some of his people to take pictures of Sherlock. He chose the most successful and provided them each with a decorative-threatening crosshairs, targeting Sherlock's head.  
One of them he sent immediately to Mycroft.  
He did not have to wait long for a response:  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"To lighten your heavy burden," Jim replied.  
  
"How much?"  
  
"Money is not important. You have so much more to offer."  
  
"What led you to this absurd idea?"  
  
  
Chuckling, Jim looked at the little banter. Two chess masters offering poisoned pawns to each other - both too smart to fall into the trap.  
What Mycroft did not know: Sooner or later he would have no other choice!  
Jim decided to let him dangle this time and annihilated again and this email address.  
He knew how to estimate Mycroft's question very well! This guy was clever. And very cool. A man made of ice.  
Mycroft had not asked in this way because he intended to pay Moriarty. No, he wanted Moriarty to reveal his degree of threat.  
If he demanded money, he would have shown a limited intellect, and perhaps even ultimately philistine claims (and possibly his misjudgment of Mycroft's assets). The less protection money he would have asked for, the more ridiculous and harmless he had to be, and if he would assess an unrealistic and intolerable high amount, that would have told Mycroft, that this blackmailer must be a megalomaniac, greedy guy who has no idea of what criminal energy a pressure like this could release in his desperate and humiliated victims.  
Had he demanded money, Mycroft would have concluded that this guy could be no significant threat. You can grab (or kill) the blackmailer at the delivery or trace the electronic money trail.  
  
  
But it would be incredibly stupid to ask such a mighty person for nothing more than money!  
  
  
  


| 

   
  
---|---  
  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Sorry, I’m only sure, that it can’t be a farmer XD – it’s called pawn, but I don’t know if “poisoned” is right. I’m not a chess player. It means to put a pawn in the opponent’s way, to sacrifice it, because this pawn is somehow protected at this position, therefore you shouldn’t take it (with an important piece…). The player who succeeds with such a trap gains a positional or material advantage.


End file.
